The foundation of the invention was a realization of the existing problems and opportunities that emerging technologies are bringing along in the areas of transaction approval and User authentication for Retail Payment and Identification transactions.
Recognized Problems                For a number of years the Card industry has been facing demands for a stronger Cardholder authentication and better protection of User and Payment instrument proprietary information. The Card industry responded with EMV-chip cards where an offline PIN was introduced replacing or substituting signature as CVM. An Offline PIN is significantly more reliable than a signature however it came with a price: the cost of EMV implementation and maintenance is significant and is billed to all parties: Merchants/POA, Acquirer, Network and Issuers. Another downside is that the PIN remained captured at POA and User verification remained within the POA environment. To mitigate the risks the Payment Card Industry (PCI) introduced PED and Data Security standards which improved security however also further increased the cost of implementation and maintenance. Verification of a CVM at the POA means that the Issuer is advised of the Cardholder Verification Result, but not actually performing User authentication, which opens up doors for “wedge” (man-in-the middle) attacks and other fraud risks.        The personal and traveler's cheques industry currently provides the ability to validate the cheques or drafts being presented, verify the history of the User (account holder), to validate the Routing Number and verify the User Account number status, However User authentication is not currently available for cheque transactions which along with the cost of Cheque Verification processing contributed to the constant decline of cheque use.        Users of identification instruments like Insurance and Health cards are either not authenticated at all or the authentication is performed by the acceptor using other pictured IDs, like a Driver's license.        
Perceived Opportunities                Mass adoption of data enabled devices enables a reach to Users of Retail payment and Identification instruments in real time, anytime, anywhere enabling User transaction approval and User authentication in Issuer controlled environment that was previously not possible.        Providing Users of Payment and Identification instruments with the ability to review and approve transactions and enter UVMs at the devices they control improves the security of UVM and effectively externalizes User Transaction approval and User authentication from POA/acceptor's environment thus removing the line between User (Cardholder) Present and User (Cardholder) Not Present transactions.        User Transaction approval and User authentication naturally belong to Issuer environment. Ensuring this decouples the Payment Instrument information (processed in authorization request/response) from User Authentication information which significantly contributes to fraud prevention.        